Cozy-airlessness - Cozy Airlessness

Two astronauts asleep on Challenger’s middeck, August 9th 1983 ‘On Challenger’s middeck, Commander Richard “Dick” Truly and Mission Specialist (MS) Guion Bluford sleep in front of forward lockers and port side wall. Truly sleeps with his head at the ceiling and his feet to the floor. Bluford, wearing sleep mask (blindfold), is oriented with the top of his head at the floor and his feet on the ceiling.’

Credit to the NASA Archives.

It's genuinely possible that Starship HLS might not be ready before Blue Moon MK 2 is.

Full Moon rises behind a Soyuz rocket

wach auf

Blue Moon really should go first. It's a more practical, less ambitious design, with better inherent safety. We shouldn't splash out on the towering ambitious megarocket just because we can. That stuff should come later, once we've gained confidence and experience. That should be obvious.

NASA does not need a lander with a dry mass of 100+ tonnes to put 2–8 astronauts on the Moon. The lander's excessive size and mass actually make several problems, such as the hatch being 30 m above the ground and there needing to be a crew elevator system with no current plan for a backup if it fails.

Big spaceship does not equal good spaceship. Don't be fooled by spectacle and awe. Starship HLS is ill-suited to taking humans to the surface of the Moon. The best case for it is as a heavy cargo vehicle, perhaps in service of a Moonbase. Again, that comes later. Skylab after Mercury-Redstone, not before.

It's genuinely possible that Starship HLS might not be ready before Blue Moon MK 2 is.

The Night Rolls In,  -    Greg Mort, 2011.

American,b.1952-

Watercolour, 14 × 20 in.   35.6 × 50.8 cm

Well actually it wasn't just about funding. Kathy Lueders basically made the decision to contract SpaceX by herself in 2021. The fact that there was a governmental leadership-change ongoing at the time might have enabled her to sneak this through: https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/option-a-source-selection-statement-final.pdf

In 2023, she quit NASA and went to work for SpaceX as a general manager of the Starship Programme in Texas.

Bare in mind that SpaceX had not yet provided a capsule mockup and their lander design was inherently less safe and more ambitious than the alternatives. It also depends upon a highly experimental super heavy-lift launch-system using several wholly new technologies and flight profiles.

But now that it's crucial for NASA's Artemis Programme, NASA is basically required to be involved in Starship development and to continue providing funds. Musk's companies are already quite well known for tricking the government and the customer out of their money.

It's genuinely possible that Starship HLS might not be ready before Blue Moon MK 2 is.